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So, in one of the great ironies of history, it was Moscow that toppled the Afghan government that Moscow had sacrificed so many lives to keep in place. The dramatic policy switch became evident when Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of one of the mujahideen groups, was invited to Moscow in November In a statement after the meeting, Boris Pankin, the Soviet foreign minister, "confirmed the necessity for a complete transfer of state power to an interim Islamic government".
In today's context, the announcement could be compared to an invitation by Hillary Clinton to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to come to Washington and a declaration the US wanted power transferred from Karzai to the Taliban. The move led to a wave of defections as several of Najibullah's army commanders and political allies switched sides and joined the mujahideen. Najibullah's army was not defeated. It just melted away. Osama bin Laden got to know the mujahideen leaders during the anti-Soviet jihad after traveling to Peshawar in He returned to Saudi Arabia, disillusioned with the Saudi royal family for collaborating with the US in the Gulf war against Saddam Hussein in — In Afghanistan, there was cause for disappointment too.
The mujahideen's incompetence was preventing them from toppling Najibullah. After Sudan came under pressure to deport him in , Bin Laden had to find somewhere else to live.
Najibullah had finally lost power in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden decided it might be the best place after all. His return in May was prompted less by a revival of interest in Afghan politics than by his need for a safe haven. His return was sponsored by the mujahideen leaders with whom he had become friendly during the anti-Soviet struggle. He flew to Jalalabad on a plane chartered by Rabbani's government that also carried scores of Arab fighters. It was only after the Taliban captured Jalalabad from the mujahideen that he was obliged to switch his allegiance or leave Afghanistan again.
He chose the first option.
The Taliban had softened their ban on girls' education and were turning a blind eye to the expansion of informal "home schools" in which thousands of girls were being taught in private flats. The medical faculty was about to re-open for women to teach midwives, nurses, and doctors since women patients could not be treated by men.
The ban on women working outside the home was also lifted for war widows and other needy women. Afghans recalled the first curbs on liberty were imposed by the mujahideen before the Taliban. From , cinemas were closed and TV films were shortened so as to remove any scene in which women and men walked or talked together, let alone touched each other.
Women announcers were banned from TV. The burqa was not compulsory, as it was to become under the Taliban, but all women had to wear the head-scarf, or hijab, unlike in the years of Soviet occupation and the Najibullah regime that followed. The mujahideen refused to allow women to attend the UN's fourth world conference on women in Beijing in Crime was met with the harshest punishment. A wooden gallows was erected in a park near the main bazaar in Kabul where convicts were hanged in public. Some 50, Kabulis were killed. Afghanistan has a long history of honour killings and honour mutilation, going back before the Taliban period and continuing until today.
They occur in every part of the country and are not confined to the culture of the Pashtun, the ethnic group from which most Taliban come. Women are brutalised by a tribal custom for settling disputes known as baad , which treats young girls as voiceless commodities. They are offered in compensation to another family, often to an elderly man, for unpaid debts or if a member of that family has been killed by a relative of the girl.
On the wider issue of gender rights, the Taliban are rightly accused of relegating Afghan women to second-class citizenship. But to single the Taliban out as uniquely oppressive is not accurate. Violence against women has a long pedigree in all communities in Afghanistan, among the Shia Hazara and the northern Tajiks, as well as the Sunni Pashtun.
Underage marriage is common across Afghanistan, and among all ethnic groups. In many communities, women are banned from leaving the house or family compound.
This leads to a host of other disabilities. Women are not allowed to take jobs. Girls are prevented from going to school.
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In the minds of western politicians and the media, these prohibitions are often associated exclusively with the Taliban. Yet the forced isolation of women by keeping them confined is a deep-seated part of Afghan rural culture. It is also found in poorer parts of the major cities.
The results suggested Nato's campaign to demonise the Taliban was no more effective than the Soviet effort to demonise the mujahedin. One survey reported on Helmandis' attitudes to justice systems. More than half the male respondents called the Taliban "completely trustworthy and fair". The Taliban took money through taxes on farm crops and road tolls but did not demand bribes. According to the survey, "Most ordinary people associate the [national] government with practices and behaviours they dislike: Does the US understand why Afghans join the Taliban?
Do Afghans understand why the US is in their country? Without clear answers, no counter-insurgency strategy can succeed. Out of who responded, only 10 supported the government. They did not like Pakistani Taliban and Taliban linked to narcotics. Afghans did not like al-Qaida, but did not equate the Taliban with this Arab-led movement.
Until the Soviet occupation of the s, Kabul was a low-rise city. And there is evidence that this is an important element of the psychological warfare that comes with counter-insurgency campaigns like this. When considering the ability of proximate powers like Russia, China, Iran, and Pakistan to forever disrupt the nascent Afghan project, it is unclear how the United States can ever create a stable and prosperous client state. For those who remain in the countryside, how they survive the winters is unimaginable. If our allies in this war are so complicated and unreliable, what of the Taliban?
Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from Alexander the Great to modern times Afghan history is certainly littered with occasions when foreign invaders were humiliated. The USSR suffered a massive military defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the mujahideen This is one of the most persistent myths of Afghan history. Poya isn't actually running for election; he is a contestant on The Candidate , a reality-TV show that follows six Afghans ages 22 or younger as they compete to develop the policies, campaign and support necessary to win a poll of viewers voting by SMS text messages on their mobile phones.
There had been some hope for a genuinely competitive election last spring, when several popular politicians announced plans to run for President, but Karzai responded by winning endorsements from key power brokers and making shrewd political alliances with former rivals, giving himself a commanding lead. That prompted a Western diplomat to lament that Karzai was both "unpopular and unbeatable. Despite high voter-registration figures, a combination of security fears, the potential for vote-rigging and indifference toward the candidates has many analysts fearing a dangerously low turnout that could undermine the legitimacy of the winning candidate and hand the Taliban a powerful propaganda tool.
Producers of The Candidate, which airs on the privately owned Tolo TV network, are hoping to help by focusing Afghans on what they want from their political leaders. And Tolo has a successful model for its idea of tele-democracy: So we started to think, How do we do the same thing in terms of elections?
It's never about policy and it is never about the outcome you want.
So we thought a program based on a competition about policies could change that. Each week, the show's contestants debate a policy topic such as security, education, health care and the economy. Although a rotating panel of judges rate the candidates based on presentation, strategy and persuasiveness, viewers get the final say, voting one candidate off the show each week, starting with the fourth episode and culminating a week before the real election.
The show's debates have become part of the country's everyday political discussions, blurring the line between reality TV and political reality. Already, he says, some of the real candidates are copying the platforms of their youthful television counterparts. For Ahmed Farid Danish, a year-old from Kabul who dresses for TV in a crystal-studded tuxedo jacket and iridescent lavender tie, going out on the campaign trail was the hardest part.
The son of a prominent politician, he had always thought about running for higher office.